Saturday, September 19, 2009

No Man Is A Lighthouse

Spending an extended time alone in a car can be either a curse or a blessing. Yesterday, while driving home from les Iles De La Madeleine, I gave my mind permission to drift off the highway and onto the gravely shoulder of the ridiculous.

Just the night before, during my swan song evening appearance in Quebec's lovely archipelago, I made my way to the western cliffs of Cap-Aux-Meules. I sensed that a stellar sunset was forthcoming, so I gathered my camera gear and traveled to Cap Du Phare (Cape Lighthouse). I arrived while the sun was still two fingers above the horizon. Perfect timing. The red sandstone cliffs were just beginning to warm up to my presence.

I was not alone in my appreciation of the gift of the evening. Others with me left their impressions on the soft sandstone underfoot, though there was a mass exodus the minute the sun dipped below the horizon. Fools! The show was just beginning when the sun fell off the radar of the blind.

The next forty-five minutes was intoxicating (in fact I'm still drunk from that evening, some thirty-six hours later). A lighthouse stood high atop the cliffs, sharing the view with this humble man. Smugly it told me that I had missed a thousand equal sunsets since my first visit in 2002, though I was warmly welcomed to share this one. This was the point when I first started to think of my would be life as a lighthouse.

As I drove home through Prince Edward Island I reminisced of that evening and day dreamed of the night. It struck me that I had a lot in common with that lighthouse, beyond narrow shoulders and a penchant for gazing into the distance. I belong next to the ocean or, at the very least, water. I love an unimpeded view of the horizon because dreams are clarified in places without obstacles. Anything is possible with your back to the land.

I could have been a factory, or a bungalow, or a skyscraper, but I very much feel like I am the lighthouse. Sometimes it feels great to stand alone, at other times not. The apparent loneliness of the lighthouse is merely solitude, and solitude is simply loneliness with purpose. I'm never alone when I'm by the ocean. Never.

What if you were challenged to give yourself four walls and a roof, or something of architectural shape and/or significance. What would you be? Where would you stand? Would a lighthouse help to shed some light on yourself if you were lost in life's sea, or would you, too, be a lighthouse?